Softknit Cotton and Kelmscott

Last week I swatched the beautiful new Rowan Softknit Cotton for my Kelmscott.  The pattern gauge is 5 stitches to the inch, and that's exactly what I got on my size 7s.  The yarn is smooth in the hand, and surprisingly bouncy.  Cotton doesn't have any natural elasticity, but this yarn is spun with a chainette construction that give it very nice recovery.  On my Addi Turbos, which have the regular point, and there was no splitting or sticking - just smooth, pleasant knitting. The yarn looks great in both plain stockinette and seed stitch portions of my swatch.

Since I seem to have an issue with sleeves (as in knitting them for my otherwise complete sweater), I decided to start with the sleeves and cast them both on at the same time. 

The sleeves and back have a sweet little flourish at the center worked in lace stitch.  I'm working the remainder of the fabric in stockinette rather than in reverse stockinette indicated in the pattern.  The front is worked entirely in a stockinette-faced lace and it just seemed more in keeping with the sweater's main feature to do it this way. 

I should have worked on this all weekend, but the amazing bunny yarn arrived Friday afternoon, and I had to play with it.  I'll blog about it soon, but in the mean time, there are a couple of photos here on Facebook and here on my Pinterest board .